Son of Him
by Urchin of the Riding Stars
Summary: A lonely Bubbles feels neglected, and decides to go on an adventure of her own. Luckily enough, in a small village, she runs into a lonely, silent little boy that agrees to be her companion. But what sort of person is Scipio, anyway?


Son of Him

A lonely Bubbles feels neglected, and decides to go on an adventure of her own. Luckily enough, in a small village, she runs into a lonely, silent little boy that agrees to be her companion. But what sort of person is Scipio, anyway? Where in the world does he come from...and what connections could he have to her worst enemy?

Prologue: Five Years Ago: The Dawning of The Dusk

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Hallo, everyone! ^^ In case you can't tell, this is my first attempt at writing a proper PPG romance. I'm not exactly sure what will happen, especially with so many projects that need completing already on deck...but I'll do my best to finish this project before I actually publish it. It's too much trouble otherwise.

Bubbles was always my favorite Puff when I was a little girl. And I can't understand why so many people pair her up with Butch or another one of the Rowdy Ruffs. The Ruffs loathe the Puffs-and it seems a little cliché to stick the girls with their male counterparts.

Scipio is somewhat based on a character most certainly NOT from PPG...five points to whomever can guess the reference! Am not exactly certain what will happen to the two of them, but I hope you'll enjoy the ride.

Warning: This chapter is very dark, but you'll understand why there's so much detail on the house later on.

I do not own PPG in any shape or form. Remember: Blossoms are red, Bubbles are Blue. I don't own-so please don't sue!

Take care, all.

_HIS_ place had no official name, really. Perhaps the 666 marked on the brimstone was enough of an addresse as it was. It certainly did its job to discourage innocent girl scouts from knocking on the door, as it eerily burned with playful cruelty. It shone so prettily at night-as if gently beckoning children to come hither, come hither to play.

Come play, so you can be devoured alive by the stone-like gargoyles that lay perched on the towers of the home, whose eyes followed your every footstep, every flinch of apprehension.

With hooded ears that could hear and delight in your yells for help.

None dared to approach his castle. While the frightening stories that went about the place were mostly nervously laughed off by adults as tales children told each other, it was still the type of place your parents told you not to play around. It was abandoned, they said. Rundown. Shabby.

No one disagreed with the gloomy state of the old ruin in the wood, but some children doubted it was really abandoned at all. Many claimed that there were visible silhouettes moving about behind the tattered curtains in the dead of night.

Some adolescents went so far as to attempt to take photos of the windows at one or so in the morning. When that didn't work, and no shadow would appear in the photos, a few frustrated teenagers decided to ding-dong-ditch the place a couple of times in order to find out once and for all if someone resided there.

After that, they were never seen or heard from ever again.

The Investigators had done a quick sweep of the place, but had found absolutely no evidence to satisfy the dark imaginings that terrified the local children. One little girl, whose older brother had been among the unfortunate five teenagers who had disappeared, had found her elder brother's baseball cap in the overgrown thorn bushes near the house. But the PI's had scornfully denounced the paltry evidence, and thus, was still no proof at all.

From that incident forward, no one dared to come even within a step of the dark house. Much to the satisfaction and boredom of the owner.

His lair stirred with the deepest and most ancient sense of evil. It was tangible from within a few steps of the damned place, and it reeked of palpable fear. While the stones that made his home were cracked, and cold to the touch, they were as sturdy as if they'd been wrought out of iron. Most of the windows had been shattered at some point, and some of the frames hung off of their hinges in faded grandeur. Any living soul who was foolish enough to approach this rotting palace was usually wise enough to put as much distance as they could from it as soon as possible. The teenagers had been the exception, but he supposed, infuriating as it was to have the wretches disturb his darkest dreams, he could still reap a little enjoyment out of them. It had been lovely to hear their screaming.

With or without 'guests,' normally, life was pleasant for the owner of 666. You couldn't ask for a more comfortable home, with creatures scuttling the darkness of the tunnels not lit by glowering bonfires.

He had everything a man or beast such as himself could want. Golden plates, pathetic people who'd sold their souls to him for eternal youth as his willing slaves, and grandeur. Plenty of gold, silver, and all the treasure the ceaseless piles in his home could hold.

Of course, Him really had no USE for the treasure, pardoning when it came to luring greedy humans to make a bargain with him, but it was the act of having it that mattered to him.

Silks. Pleasure. Riches. The delight of his dark dreams he spent most of his time brooding over, occasionally bringing them to fruition to terrified civilians, and watching them through his looking glass.

He had everything a demon could want, but there was still something missing. Something wrong. There was something Him had always yearned for-craved for in the wee hours of the night, to the extent that his thoughts were continuously on his prize, haunting him, tormenting HIM.

It unnerved him. HE was the evilest of evil-the most sadistic and cruelest of all thieves and knaves. HE was not the one meant to be haunted by years of failure when it came to obtaining his prize.

So why couldn't he have IT?

IT was a child. A baby to call his own. A child with powers like his own, only greater. When demons brought offspring, the offspring invariably grew stronger then the last generation. The children throughout the years would grow more and more powerful, until-

Until one was born who could at last bring a lasting thousand years of darkness to the world.

Him was 12th of his generation. It was the 13th born who was supposed to be born with a fiery crown of despair. But despite years and years of trying, he'd been unable to sire a child. The demonic children had all died as stillborns, and the mothers had died with them, if Him hadn't killed them out of raw fury, first.

He knew he didn't have much time. In the Prophecy he'd been told in The Beginning of All, there would be three angel children born soon to counteract his beautiful, lovely darkness. They'd destroy Him if the demon didn't have an Aegis shield to protect him.

So, Him continued to try. More failures.

Until, that was, until the First of November, when at last, a child had been conceived, and born.

But something had gone wrong. Mortifyingly, mortifyingly, wrong.

The demon had watched the woman hopelessly, eyes dull as she continued to struggle through her labor. This, of course, had to be another failure, another disappointment. Him had decided that he would simply eat the woman who had sold her service to him for revenge on her former lover, and be done with it once the child was proven to have died in her womb. Yet again.

But a miracle had happened. Much to Him's overwhelming shock, the child had still been breathing when the actual birth had begun to take place.

And Him could hear the child's heartbeat. Faint, but there. Alive. And so, so sweet.

In his frenzied hope and desperation, he could not act. He could only listen to the woman's groans and feel her rippling shudders.

Breathing became difficult, and, had Him himself had a heart, it would have been pounding. The only thing he could was seize the pale, scraggly-haired woman with clawed hands, and hiss dangerous threats of doom should she let the child die.

The fires from the pits had reared, their flames licking at the ceiling like thousands of clawed fingertips.

With a gasp, the woman had fallen back, her eyes rolling back into darkness as she faded from the world. But Him could pay her no attention at all. Stepping back from the colossal bed, the demon could only stare at the…thing he now held in his hands.

Puzzled eyes from the darkness turned to the unfamiliar sounds of a newborn child's cries.

For a long moment, Him's chest continued to rise and fall with his unexpected triumph, and he longed to cackle a refrain of victory.

This, at last, was his day of reckoning. And the sun outside was now dawning upon the end.

His son would lead an army of phantasms to take back the night. He'd strike down the Angels-pluck their wings out, feather by painful feather. The Anointed One of the Angels-he supposed that would be the leader-would be the first one to die. And then, the other two would be little more then squawking birds without the slightest idea what to do.

Then, Him would bake them both in a pie.

But upon carefully dipping the wriggling baby in a vat full of warm water to remove the glycerin and blood from its skin, Him finally took a good look at the baby….

….and looked….

And looked.

The joy in his dark soul slowly started to dwindle away as something icy began to pool inside of his stomach.

The child was supposed to be scarlet red, as if he'd come from the forges-where in the world was THAT? The boy-for he had determined it was a little boy-was skeletal pale.

Had the vixen cheated on him, and bore another man's child? No….no. The woman had not left this place for months-and he would have known if she had done so-

He turned the thing around, looking carefully. He ignored its faint squeaks of protest as he searched for a forked tail.

But there was none. Nor were there any black, hooked wings. The ears were not pointed. The child had no horns.

Feeling aghast, and close to throwing the baby, Him turned the small baby around, green eyes enormous as they trailed over the boy's translucent skin, ink-black hair, and-

Him nearly dropped the baby when the child's watery eyes opened. They were dark, with shadows extending under the burning orbs.

The boy stared at him, haunted gaze tangibly piercing, even in the flickering firelight. In fact, if Him wasn't at all mistaken, he thought that the burning pyres looked like frigid, onyx flames in the boy's eyes.

Feeling somewhat better, Him decided to look at the boy's fingers and toes.

The boy's feet were somewhat crooked, and oddly shaped. Him wondered vaguely if they'd turn into hooves once the boy was older as he moved onto the boy's ha-

"Ouch!"

After muttering a few choice swear words, Him tore his hand away, staring daggers at the boy, who continued to gaze up at the demon. Him's clawed hand was bleeding.

Curiosity overcoming his anger, Him continued his obser-

His mind abruptly went blank.

The boy's hands looked like they'd been thrust into a blender-the poor articles looked mangled, and the child already had nails. NAILS! Sharp twisted ones, at that….

The baby, now growing uneasy in the scary man's hold, started to cry; Him took the opportunity to peer inside of the babe's mouth.

The baby already had teeth! And they looked like they could be sharp ones! Momentarily distracted from the misery of his existence, Him's spirits soared.

Perhaps this thing WAS his!

….but what if it wasn't?

With an agonized groan, Him sank onto the bed, seemingly unmindful of the dead woman still lying there.

He buried his head into a clawed hand as the baby continued to weep itself a sorrowful lullaby.

He'd had the good sense to bundle up the child before it caught cold, but he did nothing to stop its ceaseless whimpering. The baby lay on the bed, unwanted, untouched, and unloved, kicking faintly at the empty air. Him had to cease the urge to strange the thing to make it stop.

He had waited so long for this day-for aching centuries, and the wench had given him THIS revolting thing. It wouldn't look at him, and acknowledge the demon as its father. It wouldn't give in to giggles of ideas of bloodshed and Armageddon-dreams that most proper demonic children had inside the womb.

Instead, the thing acted human, disgustingly enough. It wanted _comfort_. It wanted _love_.

Him seized a goblet of wine, drained it in a gulp, and carelessly threw the priceless artifact at a nearby pyre.

He couldn't be sure if the boy was his or not. The baby's defects were slightly demonic, but not much so. The kid was either slightly demonic or very much slightly WEIRD for a human child.

Did human babies have teeth? No, no, of course not….

Did they?

Him hiccupped, and turning his glassy green eyes towards the baby still lying next to him. Wrinkling his nose, as if he were handling something extremely distasteful, he awkwardly scooped the newborn up again.

The baby had been a mistake. That was the only solution he could tangibly think of, even as he stared down at the pitifully pale, squirming bundle in his cold, robotic hands.

The shadows from his domain hissed in evident displeasure as the infant continued to moan and whimper. Sad, mewing creature wouldn't even open its mouth and howl in triumph! What happened to the fanfare of dark serpents-the death call of the cuckoo? To fellow demons lining up at the door with Hallmark 'Congratulations For The Birth of Your Monstrosity?'

Him rolled his eyes.

Hmph. How thoughtless. He'd be a laughingstock if the child turned out not to be his, but he'd been trying for thousands of years to have a little terrorist of his own. If he killed the baby, there was no chance that he'd be able to have another one.

And then, the Angels would find him. The idea made Him turn cold with nausea.

What was he going to do? There was no way of telling-demons didn't happen to HAVE DNA that could be scanned for a test, let alone a doctor willing to do it without screaming and calling upon his ancestors for deliverance, or something foolish.

He glanced uncertainly at the wriggling baby in his arms once again.

He had been willing to give any amount of time necessary on training his son in the weakness of human hearts, or on shadow magic. But he'd have to wait awhile for that to happen-which meant he lost valuable time in provoking human misery. He wasn't going to give THAT up unless it was for a worthy cause.

The boy was an enormous question mark. A human amongst demons was sometimes easy to find-sometimes not. A demon amongst humans, however-

For the third time that hour, Him's mind went blank.

A demon among humans….

An enormous smile, much like the Cheshire Cat's, loomed across his face in the darkness.

And his son began to bawl once again, just as Him began laughing maniacally, where no living creature could hear him.

Bustling about the area, gathering his necessary items, Him berated himself for not thinking of such a beautiful plan earlier.

Of course. He'd leave the baby at some asylum in the human world for it to be taken care of. Him would check up on it every now and again through his spyglass, and see if it was prompted to do…things to his fellow inmates. A demon has no love for a human, and if it became prompted enough out of sheer aggravation….

….Him could see if the boy was furious enough to explode the shadows right out of him. THEN, the child could come home, and lead the night. If it turned out to be human….

….well, Him would think of something. The idea made a smirk curl his features.

The monster seized the children's books he'd read as a child, including the Gorey ABCS, which he knew by heart:

_A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, _

_B is for Basil assaulted by bears,_

_ C is for Clara who wasted away,_

_ D is for Demond thrown out of a sleigh, _

_E is for Ernest who choked on a Peach…._

And he grabbed a small piece of paper from his desk, and an old quill. After pondering thoughtfully for a minute or two, he at last began to write, in a spidery script:

_This here is my son, -…._

This made Him pause, and he put his pen between his sharp teeth for a moment or so. What WAS he going to call the boy, anyhow? He certainly wasn't going to call the boy Him Jr.-Him was a simple name that said it all. It was his, and he wasn't going to share it with anyone, let alone his own son.

_But what to call him?_

After a moment's pause, a name sparked to life on the outskirts of Him's consciousness.

_Scipio._ The name of the ruthless general who had defeated Hannibal and sent the dark conqueror to Him's greedy hands.

Yes. And it sounded right. The spelling reminded him of a scorpion.

Perfect.

Him hastily dipped his quill into the inkpot again.

_This here is my son, Scipio del Inferno. I ask that you take him off of my-_

Him had to cross out the word 'claws' and write the word 'Hands.'

_-hands for the time being, as I do not…have the monetary expenses at this point and time to tend to him and his needs. I leave him with a few of my old belongings, in the hopes that he will find them interesting, and worth perusing. _

_I ask that you take good care of him, as I may or may not return for the boy someday._

_Yours, truly, sincerely, etc-_

_-H._

Him lowered his quill, feeling satisfied.

Yes. He'd leave Scipio in the hands of a human nursemaid-did they still have nursemaids? Perhaps in England….but it made no difference to him where he put the boy. All places were alike to Him, and so easily left to be desecrated.

And with that, Him scooped up the small bundle of parcels that he meant for Scipio to have, and, careful not to be pricked again by the boy's metallic like fingernails, Him slowly sank through the stone of his abode, into the shadows, out of sight.

His mark had been a shabby children's home in London. He'd carefully dropped the baby off on the porch, near an old bundle of rags left out for the ragman. With a sigh, he'd stood, and turned around.

He looked back.

The baby had fallen asleep by this time, its breathing peaceful and untroubled. Him's green eyes narrowed, and then flickered.

He walked back to the child, and slowly removed a small trinket from his pocket. The necklace fell to a clatter beside the boy, next to the small letter enclosed with the baby.

Him waited about a moment, and then strode away into the early morning darkness before disappearing entirely in a shower of sparks, but not without feeling satisfied.

Sister Agatha Berne would open the door at any minute to retrieve the Post, only to find a rather unusual baby to tend. If Him was right, she'd cluck and fuss over the baby before scooping him up, and grudgingly tugging him in.

Stupid, stupid woman. He almost, I repeat, almost-felt a pang of pity for the children who resided at Briar's End. But his amusement was much more palpable.

The baby was bearing the mark of the inferno.

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-Whew! Alrighty, that went on for a little while…but I hope you're interested enough in the story to review. Next chapter, the girls actually get to come in. ^-^


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